RE: IQ - A cautionary tale (Re: The ways of child prodigies)

From: mike99 (mike99@lascruces.com)
Date: Tue Nov 22 2005 - 12:47:32 MST


Very much on point here is last Sunday's New York Time's Magazine article:

     "The Prodigy Puzzle"
         By ANN HULBERT
    Published: November 20, 2005

'So you're the geniuses," Senator Carl Levin said, looking pleased as he
peered over his glasses. He was addressing the flaxen-haired Heidi
Kaloustian, a 17-year-old freshman at the University of Michigan, and John
Zhou, a superfriendly 17-year-old senior at Detroit Country Day School,
unusual visitors to Room 269 of the Russell Office Building on Capitol Hill.
Michigan had distinguished itself, Levin had been informed: the state
boasted two Davidson Fellows, and he had clearly been told these teenagers
came trailing brainy superlatives. "Genius loves company," announced the
September press release about the students who had won scholarships awarded
annually since 2001 by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a
foundation that supports "profoundly intelligent" youths, a more recent term
for off-the-charts children. "Seventeen prodigies," the press release went
on, were "to be honored at the Library of Congress for contributions to
society" in the fields of science, math, technology, music and literature.
...

For full article [requires FREE registration} go to:
 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/magazine/20prodigies.html

Regards,
Michael LaTorra

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-sl4@sl4.org [mailto:owner-sl4@sl4.org]On Behalf Of Martin
> Striz
> Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 4:23 PM
> To: sl4@sl4.org
> Subject: IQ - A cautionary tale (Re: The ways of child prodigies)
>
>
> Christopher Langan claims to have an IQ of around 195. Apparently
> that's backed up by some of Hoeflin's tests. He founded the Mega
> Foundation, which has a cut off of the 99.9999th percentile in
> intelligence (IQ of 174+ or thereabouts). More info here:
> http://www.iscid.org/christopherlangan.php
>
> He runs a website expounding his "cognitive-theoretic model of the
> universe" (http://www.ctmu.org), which adds up to a bunch of
> pseudoscientific nonsense.
>
> He also criticizes Darwinism
> (http://megafoundation.org/CTMU/Articles/CTM.htm), writing "the field
> of evolutionary biology is currently dominated by neo-Darwinism, a
> troubled marriage of convenience between post-Mendelian genetics and
> natural selection." Utterly laughable.
>
> They say smart people can be dumb. Apparently superintelligent people
> can be retarded.
>
> Cheers,
> Martin
>



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